I have a feeling for what he's trying to ask, cause I've also encountered claims of this "resolution", that higher resolution will, just like in a digital picture, offer smoother transitions, in this case between slightly different sound levels. But, only from greatly dubious articles/authors, like this. Never from engineers or technical people, or even that wiki article.

"CD Audio has also left a lasting impression on computer and other digital audio applications, where 16-bit is the default "hi-fi" sample resolution (as opposed to earlier 8, 6 or even 4-bit efforts), with higher precision often considered the reserve of audiophiles as the representable range of intensities rapidly exceeds the theoretical limits of human perception, particularly when environmental noise is considered."

And I think one non-highly-technical version of the question of 'resolution' could be two-fold,

1. what is the smallest change in level that the human ear can resolve? (my understanding is that, at best, with an appropriate probe signal, it's 0.2dB, so that the standard target for level-matching it to match to within 0.2dB)

2. does 16bit format permit that small a difference to be resolved? (yes)

Then there is a slightly different approach -- what is the 'quietest' signal that can be distinguished above background noise? That depends on the background noise level. Tape's and vinyl's is higher than Redbook's, so......

Vinyl sounds superior by design.First step is to EQ the bass of.Than you cut a groove in a plastic masterThen you make a metal copy of this masterThis metal copy is pressed into vinylAt playback the lack of bass is compensated by EQ A copy of a copy with EQ applied two times.Combine this with a silent groove producing 30 dB noise on its own.Small wonder digital canít beat this.

Ok your have right.From the point view of an oscilloscope digital is better, without any doubt!

But consider that our brain prefer the middle frequencies and the vinyl EQ the middle.We don't like hi freq ... and vinyl cut out the hi freq.

And probably in the vinyl there are also some distortion that our that our brain interprets as pleasant.

Ok your have right.From the point view of an oscilloscope digital is better, without any doubt!

But consider that our brain prefer the middle frequencies and the vinyl EQ the middle.We don't like hi freq ... and vinyl cut out the hi freq.

And probably in the vinyl there are also some distortion that our that our brain interprets as pleasant.

So the vinyl sound "better".

Where does that bullshit notion come from? Did you ever look at a spectrogram from a test record?I tested my denon dl 103 with the Flloyd Toole test record and the spectrogram as displayed on my DEQ 2496 is almost perfectly flat after the RIAA decompression from 20Hz to 20kHz.

Where do YOU have any proof for your nonsense like: and vinyl cut out the hi freq.

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The recording/tracking ability of vinyl is easily at least 50 kHz and perhaps as high as 100 kHz. The most notably proof of this is the CD4 quadraphonic system which relied on a 45 kHz bandwidth to be accurately reproduced. That said, the high-frequency response accuracy of vinyl varies tremendously. Frequency deviations of 5-10 dB or greater are not uncommon in the 20 kHz range for many records.

And I think one non-highly-technical version of the question of 'resolution' could be two-fold,

1. what is the smallest change in level that the human ear can resolve? (my understanding is that, at best, with an appropriate probe signal, it's 0.2dB, so that the standard target for level-matching it to match to within 0.2dB)

2. does 16bit format permit that small a difference to be resolved? (yes)

Then there is a slightly different approach -- what is the 'quietest' signal that can be distinguished above background noise? That depends on the background noise level. Tape's and vinyl's is higher than Redbook's, so......

That's basically what I was getting at. A common and quite old argument about the superiority of vinyl is basically about missing information and it seems pretty straightforward to refute with regard to the highest frequency that can be reproduced because it's very rare for anyone to hear any higher than 22,050 Hz, but I wasn't clear on whether the 16 bit format surpassed the capabilities of the human ear. If it does, then arguments about vinyl being better for that reason seem to also be wrong in a similar way.

I can give you the perspective of someone who loves both digital and analog music music which has been properly recorded, mixed, and mastered with loving care -- but vinyl wins over CD, no doubt in my experience.

And I'm not in love with vinyl over the darn cover art as some would suggest -- furthermore I'm certainly not a hipster although I grew a beard once in my life.

I returned to vinyl about 1 year ago afters decades of CDs and a collection in the thousands, the horrific over compressed sound of modern CDs sent me running back to vinyl. Once I started ripping my vinyl and listening back on digital equipment, I was blown away by how much better (natural, open, dynamic) it sounded.

Most of this was due to differences in mastering and perhaps a bias towards the frequency content of LP (I grew up on vinyl).

BUT, I also noticed something interesting in my return to vinyl:

16 / 44.1 is NOT enough to fully capture the content of an LP when ripping the LP and playing back on good equipment.

I've convinced myself that vinyl carries more information that 16 / 44.1 simply by ripping the same material to both 16 bit and 24 bit and comparing. The 24 bit vinyl rips of the SAME material sounds better -- more punch, smoother, more natural -- I realize these are all subjective but I did this test with no axe to grind and I was actually hoping 16 bits would be enough since I could then move these also to my iPod for convenience -- however, the comparison was convincing enough that despite less convenience (must dither the files to play on iPod) and more storage space needed, I settled on 24 bit for my ripping process.

I love the convenience of digital -- it has allowed me to carry around 100's of LPs ripped at 24 bit which I can play back instantly with a good DAC. So, I'm by no means "anti digital", its just clear to me that vinyl has more fidelity than 16 / 44.1 can reproduce. Especially old vinyl just sounds incredible -- clear, wide and deep sound stage, realistic, open.

On a practical level, my LPs destroy my CDs of the same material (I have thousands of both CDs and LPs). The dynamic range (peak to RMS) is almost always measurably better for both old and new vinyl than CD counterparts. I realize that this is mainly due to mastering differences, which is why I qualify this point with the word "practical".

The frequency range of LPs that I rip is far superior (out to 48k when ripping at 96k) than CD counterparts -- this is obvious but I don't really know if this matters -- although I'm not a bat (or a hipster) I tend to think it probably does matter in ways that we don't fully understand quite yet, but I've not proven it to myself.

My point here is that I've proven, at least to myself, that LPs not only practically sound better than CD counterparts but also carry more than 16 bits of information.

I'd be really interested to hear from others who have done a similar experiment using good equipment with an open mind, what have you found?

Who gives a fuck about noise? Do you really think there is actual musical information contained? How would you know that? Are you of the order chiroptera?

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Has anyone else tried this experiment?

No, I own a few thorens and a transcriptor and a technics sl10, with denon cartridges and the technics M310. I have tried cartridges from Shure Ultra 500 to Shure V15VXMR to Goldring 1042 to several ortofons. I aslo have used tonearms from Acos Lustre to Rega RB 350 to the present setup with an airbearing tangential arm to a SME 2 and an SME 3 arm.

Each change was the result of intensive listening and selecting the best arm/cartridge combo as to behaviour on test reords and actual music. Criteria was sibliance, sensitivity to surface noise, tracking etc.

I stuck with the Denon because of their neutral sound when compared to other cartridges. My preamp is a DIY customized studio Logitek with transformer impedance matching inputs. I also have used the Stanton and a freestanding Naim phono section with a very quiet powersupply only to find I was unable to hear a difference. I still have over two thousand LPs but in contrast to you I have done blind test (really blinded) with level matching and switching done by a friend, and in no way can support your contention that vinyl is in any way superior. I ran the analogue and the digital signal from a Micromega Stage 2 through a sample rate converter at 24/96 into a deq 24/96 used for room response correction. The signal this way could be easily level matched and after some tries timed precisely and switched trough the SRC easily between the two sources.

I ran Bryston BP20 preamp for the analogue section (tuner and phono) with a passive volume control with Alps sixgang pots after the deq into total of three Bryston amps (2B, 4B, 4BST)

To our combined chagrin the sound quality was only distinguishable by the typical noise - if ever so faint on the best records - of the lead in and the between tracks silent groove who unfortunately even on new old stock records fresh out of the plastic cover is never silent.

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its just clear to me that vinyl has more fidelity than 16 / 44.1 can reproduce. Especially old vinyl just sounds incredible -- clear, wide and deep sound stage, realistic, open.

That is a contention you would have to prove in a blinded test - which unfortunately because of the inherently higher noise in records can only be done by digitizing LP and cleaning it up sonically.

I have listened to both side by side and can only say you claims are at the same level as those who claim they can hear differences between cables, shakti stones and other such unfounded statements.

And btw - after I had compared an fucking ancient Quad 405 amp with bulging caps in the PS section into the same Kef 104/2 and absolutely could not hear any sonic difference between the two (a Bryston 4BST, running CD bypassing all the sound processing stuff) I sold all the Bryston gear and got myself two AS 2.100 amps from hypex and mounted those in the base of the kefs, fed directly from my server and never regretted the move for on instance.

Oh, I think you are definitely in the minority, as your contentions seems to be more inspired by untested belief than by evidence.

That is a contention you would have to prove in a blinded test - which unfortunately because of the inherently higher noise in records can only be done by digitizing LP and cleaning it up sonically.

I would think that if you do 20 separate digitizations, it would be possible to do a proper ABX test of vinyl vs digitized vinyl. There would be audible noise, distortion etc, but not in a way that would unfairly make it easier to identify which is which.

If (predictably) 16/44.1 does not audibly degrade sound, then we have indication that CD can be used for anything that vinyl can be used for, as long as those bits and bytes are filled with the subjectively preferred data.

It is well-known that masterings do differ significantly, and not surprising that some people will prefer specific masters from the 60s, 70s or 80s over more recent ones. It also seems that choice of vinyl playback equipment can affect sound audibly, and if some audiophile refuse himself to alter the sound of CDs using suitable means, but allow himself to do the same for vinyl playback, this opens up a larger window for perceptually pleasing vinyl.

This discussion shows the amazing fact that vinyl, though being half a century or older in its mature form, was still good enough to be even considered compared to todays technology.

its just clear to me that vinyl has more fidelity than 16 / 44.1 can reproduce. Especially old vinyl just sounds incredible -- clear, wide and deep sound stage, realistic, open.

That is a contention you would have to prove in a blinded test - which unfortunately because of the inherently higher noise in records can only be done by digitizing LP and cleaning it up sonically.

If there is a case where the to the best of their ability part of TOS#8 is to be invoked, it would be cases where blinding the study will kill the patient. You won't see docturs arguing over using double-blind studies of heart transplants, and you shouldn't see Hydrogenaudio participants arguing that room acoustics is insignificant just because a user doesn't bother to spend a million on an anechoic chamber.

What you could do, is of course digitize the LP and play back the signal with no difference (bar volume matching). That way you could isolate the audible effect of digitization.

I've convinced myself that vinyl carries more information that 16 / 44.1 simply by ripping the same material to both 16 bit and 24 bit and comparing. The 24 bit vinyl rips of the SAME material sounds better -- more punch, smoother, more natural

I have also compared 16 and 24 bit rips of vinyl and I hear no difference.

There are other possible reasons why 24 bit sounds better than 16 bit to you:

1. Expectation bias. It's no use saying that you had no axe to grind and were hoping 16 bit would be good enough. If you did these comparisons sighted, then the results are not trustworthy. You need to repeat the comparison blind. Using Foobar's ABX comparator is very easy, so there's no excuse not to do a blind test.

Let's assume you do a blind test and still hear a difference between 24 and 16 bit rips. If you made the two recordings in separate runs, then there are possible reasons why the results may sound different:

2. Vinyl is an analogue medium and is not 100% repeatable in playback. The two recordings *will* have delivered different signals. For example, the first play of an LP typically cleans the grooves out a bit, so a subsequent play might deliver slightly less surface noise. Or particles of dust may fall onto the record prior to the second play, resulting in additional minors ticks.

3. You got the gain staging slightly different so that the levels are not precisely matched. Even if you don't consciously notice a volume difference, small level differences can still alter the way things sound.

If the goal here is to discover whether vinyl contains more information than can be captured at 16 bit, then the correct methodology is to record once at 24 bit, then convert that same recording to 16 bit and do an ABX comparison. In principle you should add dither when converting to 16 bit, but IMHO the vinyl noise floor is so high that you can probably afford to just truncate the bottom 8 bits.